Connectedness between crude oil and US equities: The impact of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract In this paper, we exploit multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) to investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the cross-correlations between oil and US equity market (as represented by the S&P 500 index). First, we examine the detrended moving average cross-correlation coefficient between oil and S&P 500 returns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The correlation analysis shows that US stock markets became more correlated with oil during the pandemic in the long term. Second, we find that the pandemic has caused an increase in the long range cross correlations over the small fluctuations. Third, the MF-DCCA method shows that the pandemic caused an increase of multifractality in cross-correlations between the two markets. In sum, the pandemic caused a closer correlation between oil and US equity in the long range and a deeper dynamical connection between oil and US equity markets as indicated by the multifractality tests.